Episode 10
Enthusiasm From All of the Developers and Curiosity From Everyone Else
Ashley Firth, Octopus Energy, Author of Practical Web Inclusion & Accessibility
Ashley talks about his early experience as a web developer - trying to find the resources to build accessible products. He describes his efforts to recruit team members for the effort and how those experiences contributed to the writing of his book.
Mentioned in this episode:
Info about Accessibility at Blink
Transcript
(soft music)
Speaker:- Hello, this is Digital Accessibility,
Speaker:the people behind the progress.
Speaker:I'm Joe Welinske, the creator and host of this series.
Speaker:And as an accessibility professional myself,
Speaker:I find it very interesting
Speaker:as to how others have found their way into this profession.
Speaker:So let's meet one of those people right now
Speaker:and hear about their journey.
Speaker:(upbeat music)
Speaker:All right, well, welcome.
Speaker:Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Ashley Firth.
Speaker:Hi, Ashley, how are you doing today?
Speaker:- Hey, I'm good, thanks.
Speaker:How are you.
Speaker:- I'm doing pretty good.
Speaker:I am in my home office in Vashon Island, near Seattle,
Speaker:which is where Blink's headquarters are.
Speaker:And we're just starting to get back
Speaker:into doing some office visits,
Speaker:but still working from home mostly.
Speaker:Where are you talking to me from?
Speaker:- I'm talking to you from London in the United Kingdom.
Speaker:We are still doing a bit of a mixture of office visits.
Speaker:A lot of people still working from home,
Speaker:very much a personal preference at the moment.
Speaker:We are edging towards various freedoms
Speaker:somewhere near mid July,
Speaker:we're supposed to be a little bit more free,
Speaker:but being safe up until that point.
Speaker:- Being safe and healthy is very important.
Speaker:So well, I, yeah,
Speaker:there are a number of things
Speaker:that I thought we could talk about,
Speaker:but maybe a good place to start
Speaker:would be if you could give like a brief description
Speaker:of what you're doing today.
Speaker:- Sure thing, yeah.
Speaker:So right now, as of today,
Speaker:my job title is Head of Interfaces,
Speaker:which is a broad and weird job title to describe
Speaker:the idea that I bring front end developers,
Speaker:back end developers, mobile developers,
Speaker:and designers together to solve problems effectively.
Speaker:And the problems we're solving are in the energy industry.
Speaker:So I work for Octopus Energy,
Speaker:who are an energy supplier in the UK.
Speaker:We did recently open up in the US over in Texas
Speaker:and a few other places across the world.
Speaker:So my job is to try and make all of those experiences
Speaker:feel consistent, feel great, feel seamless
Speaker:and feel inclusive, importantly as well,
Speaker:to make sure that everyone
Speaker:can kind of engage with the content
Speaker:and make sure everybody that works for us is aware
Speaker:of just how important that is.
Speaker:- And the thing that ended up connecting me with you
Speaker:was your book, Practical Web Inclusion and Accessibility,
Speaker:and that's something that we can talk about
Speaker:a little bit more later,
Speaker:but that's probably related to the work
Speaker:that you're doing there as well, right?
Speaker:- Oh, no doubt.
Speaker:Yes, no doubt.
Speaker:It's the result of a lot of work that has gone in.
Speaker:A lot of places that perhaps didn't care about it
Speaker:as much as they should,
Speaker:and then helping to build a place that truly did.
Speaker:So, yeah, that was the combination of all of that.
Speaker:- Well, one of the things that I'm interested in
Speaker:in these interviews that I'm doing here
Speaker:is just finding out how people found their way
Speaker:to the accessibility work that they're doing today.
Speaker:For many of us, it's not a straight path
Speaker:or one that we even knew we were on when we started it,
Speaker:but why don't you talk a little bit,
Speaker:you know, kind of pick a starting point for your career,
Speaker:you know, some of the highlights,
Speaker:you know, kind of where you started
Speaker:and what the progression was
Speaker:that got you to where you are today.
Speaker:- Sure, yeah, no problem.
Speaker:I think probably one of the most important starting points
Speaker:is when I didn't know about accessibility.
Speaker:To be honest with you,
Speaker:I studied in a place called Bournemouth
Speaker:in the south of England, and nothing about my degree
Speaker:taught me about accessibility unfortunately.
Speaker:We got the opportunity
Speaker:to learn a little bit about web design
Speaker:and development game design and development,
Speaker:all of that great stuff, but there wasn't really anything
Speaker:that placed an emphasis on that,
Speaker:which looking back now is a real shame,
Speaker:and I know that there's work going in
Speaker:to try and make that better,
Speaker:but I came out into the industry,
Speaker:you know, me and a lot of colleagues
Speaker:unaware of that as a general area,
Speaker:and started working in an agency in central London,
Speaker:which had some great clients,
Speaker:you know, a lot of nice names, a lot of names that I knew
Speaker:and I was excited to work on
Speaker:for various different projects
Speaker:in various different timeframes,
Speaker:but one thing that seemed quite consistent to me
Speaker:was the pace at which everything was being built
Speaker:and the priorities those people had
Speaker:when they were building them.
Speaker:So we would build a website for, you know,
Speaker:a well-known client
Speaker:and it had to be done in X amount of months
Speaker:and when that happens,
Speaker:you can only throw so many people at it
Speaker:and decisions start being made
Speaker:about where the effort should be posted.
Speaker:Should it be, you know,
Speaker:try and get an extra feature put in there,
Speaker:is it to make it work for a certain number of older browsers
Speaker:or anything like that?
Speaker:And one thing that didn't really factor
Speaker:into that conversation is okay, but you know,
Speaker:what if somebody doesn't see the sign?
Speaker:What if they don't see the various colors of that site?
Speaker:You know, what if they don't navigate it with a mouse,
Speaker:is it still possible?
Speaker:Is there anything that allows them to think about like that?
Speaker:And I had started having a little bit of a look
Speaker:at that general area, purely out of curiosity, to be honest,
Speaker:to kind of understand why there wasn't a conversation
Speaker:going on about these things,
Speaker:because it's, I mean, you will know
Speaker:it's one of those threads you pull and it just keeps going
Speaker:and it keeps going, and there's a whole rabbit hole
Speaker:to explore and it confused me a lot
Speaker:why that wasn't at the forefront of the conversations
Speaker:that were being had.
Speaker:I was spending time making a website work for a browser
Speaker:that very few people still used.
Speaker:It's usually the client themselves
Speaker:that had outdated computers.
Speaker:You know, your old i8s and 9s
Speaker:that needed to make sure that this website worked
Speaker:in a decent way and worked for them,
Speaker:but didn't give any emphasis to accessibility at all.
Speaker:And so it was that amongst a few other things
Speaker:that got me thinking that maybe my efforts
Speaker:were being put in the wrong place, to be honest with you.
Speaker:You know, it sounded good to have these names working
Speaker:on your CV, but I didn't feel like I was building something
Speaker:I could be proud of.
Speaker:And, you know, there was no good answer
Speaker:when somebody would say, well, why doesn't it work
Speaker:in this way?
Speaker:Why couldn't it work in this way?
Speaker:Which was a start of a real frustration to me.
Speaker:- Well, yeah, let's just kind of stop there for a second,
Speaker:because you mentioned, you know, pulling the thread
Speaker:and the rabbit hole,
Speaker:and certainly, I think most of us
Speaker:that start to explore accessibility for the first time
Speaker:realize that there there's a lot
Speaker:that's already been discussed out there,
Speaker:but what exactly was it that you, you know, identified,
Speaker:like what were some of the resources
Speaker:that you identified at the time,
Speaker:and kind of, what was your feeling as you started to,
Speaker:you know, find your way down that rabbit hole?
Speaker:- Yeah, good question.
Speaker:I remember the first tool that I properly had a look at
Speaker:was a series of do and don't posters
Speaker:that were made by the UK government.
Speaker:So we have something called the GDS,
Speaker:or the Government Digital Service
Speaker:that by law are required to be accessible
Speaker:to a certain level, which is WCAG 2.1 at AA level.
Speaker:They have to ensure that all their journeys
Speaker:are kind of that level.
Speaker:And after the equality act, a lot of effort went in there
Speaker:to ensure that they were getting to that point.
Speaker:And as part of that,
Speaker:they were sharing some of the experiences
Speaker:that they had had as they were going through these journeys.
Speaker:And they had created these series of posters
Speaker:and they were just really top level things.
Speaker:As you said, kind of each one of them,
Speaker:its own kind of cluster of things
Speaker:that you can then go and ask a thousand questions about,
Speaker:but it was the very first thing.
Speaker:You could kind of pop them up on the walls
Speaker:and they would be there constantly.
Speaker:You would be working and it would tweak in your brain
Speaker:and you would go, okay, yeah, cool,
Speaker:I need to think about that.
Speaker:And all those prompts, they exist everywhere.
Speaker:And so from each one of those,
Speaker:it created an area, like a topic
Speaker:that I was like, okay, you know what,
Speaker:this week I'm gonna go and find out everything I can
Speaker:about screen readers.
Speaker:You know, let me try JAWS for a bit.
Speaker:And let me try what voiceover is
Speaker:and what's the difference between them?
Speaker:You know, let me try doing my job for a week,
Speaker:just with a screen reader.
Speaker:Can I get by?
Speaker:Can I learn what the deal is with that?
Speaker:And other great things that they have
Speaker:from like going down that GDS kind of avenue
Speaker:was that they have empathy labs in the UK as well,
Speaker:which allow you to kind of go
Speaker:and to the best of their ability,
Speaker:try and simulate some of these access needs, right?
Speaker:And you can understand what it would be like
Speaker:to have a sensory deprivation,
Speaker:or, you know, a visual impairment or something like that.
Speaker:You know, not absolutely copy for the real thing, of course,
Speaker:but it's a starter,
Speaker:it's something that allows you to start going,
Speaker:oh, okay, yeah.
Speaker:I'm starting to really understand
Speaker:beyond like a persona profile,
Speaker:you know, where you try a hypothetical test
Speaker:and say, okay, you know,
Speaker:Jane is 25 and she has a visual impairment.
Speaker:Can I get through this journey?
Speaker:You start to go, okay, well, can I do that myself?
Speaker:Is that something that's at all possible?
Speaker:So I think those were the main things initially
Speaker:that had me going, okay,
Speaker:I need to understand this is what one company is doing
Speaker:in one area, because they have to.
Speaker:Let me understand a little bit more of the people
Speaker:that are kind of going at this when they don't have to,
Speaker:and the conversations that exist there.
Speaker:And that led me to various meetups.
Speaker:They hosted a lot of those.
Speaker:So again, it's a bit like the topics themselves.
Speaker:You start with one area, they are doing some other things.
Speaker:They are doing things in another avenue.
Speaker:You start to meet like-minded people,
Speaker:you start to find other resources.
Speaker:And it just kind of kept going from one to the other.
Speaker:I would just hop around all of these various different areas
Speaker:and understand as much as I could
Speaker:and meet people with those access needs
Speaker:to truly understand what it was
Speaker:that was causing those barriers
Speaker:between the content that should be so easy for them
Speaker:to kind of access online, given the platform that it's on,
Speaker:but it has reached a situation where they're being failed
Speaker:by the people that are building these things unfortunately,
Speaker:sometimes without them even knowing.
Speaker:- And did you have receive support from your organization
Speaker:that you were working on at the time?
Speaker:I know that's an issue for people.
Speaker:I mean, a lot of us kind of get in just doing it
Speaker:because we wanna learn ourselves,
Speaker:but it's always helpful if we get support
Speaker:in the daily work that we do.
Speaker:How did it shake out for you?
Speaker:- The place I was at when I first started researching,
Speaker:I did not have buy-in for sure.
Speaker:I was doing this on my own time.
Speaker:I was kind of understanding this
Speaker:as much as I could in and around.
Speaker:I of course would have conversations with people,
Speaker:you know, on client work,
Speaker:if that was product or project managers,
Speaker:if it was stakeholders, et cetera, to kind of say,
Speaker:we should probably have a look at this,
Speaker:but it wasn't until I joined the company that I'm at now,
Speaker:where we were starting from the ground up.
Speaker:You know, I was one of the first people in
Speaker:to try and set values that would stay with us
Speaker:through the whole time, right.
Speaker:And so really early on in that journey,
Speaker:I spoke to our CEO, Greg and said,
Speaker:hey, I need to truly understand what this is.
Speaker:We want it to be a tech first company.
Speaker:We wanted to provide solutions that were truly inclusive,
Speaker:and I didn't feel like even after doing
Speaker:the reading that I had done,
Speaker:I didn't feel equipped enough
Speaker:to kind of start building something
Speaker:without truly understanding the different avenues
Speaker:that people might engage with it.
Speaker:So I said to him, I need a bit of time.
Speaker:You know, everything that a CEO doesn't wanna hear.
Speaker:You know, when we don't have a quote journey
Speaker:and we don't have any customers
Speaker:and we haven't signed anybody up,
Speaker:I said, I need about three weeks.
Speaker:I need to go away.
Speaker:I need to have a look at everything.
Speaker:There was no way I was gonna get all of the knowledge
Speaker:in three months, but I had three weeks,
Speaker:but I could understand enough of it initially
Speaker:to build something that I wouldn't look back on and regret.
Speaker:And to his credit, he was like, yeah, okay.
Speaker:We need to do it right.
Speaker:Let's see if we can build this
Speaker:into everything that we're doing
Speaker:so that we don't try and alter on,
Speaker:or find a halfway solution with a third party down the line.
Speaker:Let's see if we can build something
Speaker:that's actually inclusive.
Speaker:And so I'm very thankful to that.
Speaker:It's amongst many of the other reasons why I'm still here,
Speaker:why I'm still trying to kind of push that along
Speaker:and why other people have joined in many instances,
Speaker:you know, us as a supplier or us as a employer,
Speaker:because these are the things that matter to us,
Speaker:and we actually put the time in,
Speaker:and it's the first time I've experienced that,
Speaker:and I'm very thankful
Speaker:that he was so understanding at that time,
Speaker:because it's allowed it to kind of, to grow
Speaker:and be really one of the pillars
Speaker:of what we think is important, right.
Speaker:They're our customers, and they wanna engage with us
Speaker:and they have the right to do that
Speaker:in the way that they want to.
Speaker:- And so then as you've moved forward,
Speaker:you know, working on different projects over time,
Speaker:different organizations,
Speaker:have you kind of coming at it as like the one person
Speaker:in your organization working on it,
Speaker:like from a developer's perspective,
Speaker:or, you know, have you, you know, had designers,
Speaker:researchers also kind of part of a team.
Speaker:It's different, you know, for different people,
Speaker:but sometimes developers end up just having to do it
Speaker:at the end of the project,
Speaker:because nothing else has happened before that.
Speaker:And that's always an unfortunate situation,
Speaker:but kind of what were your experiences in that area?
Speaker:- Yeah, it's entirely fair point.
Speaker:I think one of the first things that has always struck me
Speaker:going through this over the past few years,
Speaker:is I've never met a developer that hasn't wanted
Speaker:to make their sites accessible, right?
Speaker:Not one, to be honest with you has gone,
Speaker:no, I've got no interest in it.
Speaker:People are completely willing to do it,
Speaker:and they want to, because developers are curious.
Speaker:They wanna kind of understand the various ways
Speaker:that people can connect with it.
Speaker:The problem that we had
Speaker:was that certainly when I was looking
Speaker:before I kind of started writing the book,
Speaker:was that they were very technical guides
Speaker:and very long and lengthy guides
Speaker:to how to make things accessible.
Speaker:We of course have a framework, which is great to have,
Speaker:you know, it's nice to have success criteria.
Speaker:It's nice to be able to measure it against something,
Speaker:but let's not get it twisted.
Speaker:It's a very intense thing to try and engage with.
Speaker:To begin with, I know if I hadn't found certain resources,
Speaker:I would have found it a lot harder to do that.
Speaker:And so having conversations with developers
Speaker:was a lot easier than having it with product managers
Speaker:or designers who much like us,
Speaker:hadn't really had anything in that kind of teaching
Speaker:about learning previous for it,
Speaker:but also didn't really a resource like you know, WCAG
Speaker:and things like that to do something about it.
Speaker:And so this is what started formulating the idea in my mind,
Speaker:is that I wanted to be that kind of initial
Speaker:accessibility champion and to be like the person
Speaker:that's willing to have those conversations,
Speaker:and be someone you can go to,
Speaker:but ultimately that the company wouldn't need one
Speaker:because everybody would be one, right?
Speaker:That's the goal eventually,
Speaker:rather than having someone drive forward an issue,
Speaker:that everybody would have bought into the issue,
Speaker:and everyone would be thinking about it
Speaker:when they do their work,
Speaker:because then it needs very little governing
Speaker:or kind of monitoring or auditing.
Speaker:Everyone is just involved.
Speaker:And so I wanted to create a conversation that we could have
Speaker:that didn't feel difficult
Speaker:for different disciplines to engage with.
Speaker:You didn't need to understand coding
Speaker:to get why it was important to do the things
Speaker:that we were trying to do,
Speaker:to understand at least at a basic level,
Speaker:the barriers that people were coming across
Speaker:when they were engaging with content
Speaker:that we would look at proudly and say,
Speaker:oh, well, this is a lovely website,
Speaker:it's a really nice webpage,
Speaker:without thinking about this other almost forgotten area
Speaker:of the audience, that were just not getting an experience
Speaker:anywhere like something we thought we had built proudly
Speaker:for everybody else.
Speaker:It was not inclusive.
Speaker:So that was probably my initial experience,
Speaker:is one of enthusiasm from all of the developers,
Speaker:and one of curiosity
Speaker:from all of the other parts of the business,
Speaker:because they were hearing it for the first time, truly.
Speaker:It was the first time they'd heard about.
Speaker:- You mentioned the government regulations
Speaker:around accessibility.
Speaker:In the United States, you know, we have a legal framework
Speaker:around that as well,
Speaker:most of which is related to selling digital products
Speaker:and services into the government
Speaker:and then that can start at the federal level,
Speaker:but carry down state, municipal level,
Speaker:but at least the United States, you know,
Speaker:outside of that, it ends up
Speaker:that it's up to individual organizations to decide,
Speaker:you know, how they wanna approach that.
Speaker:In some situations, organizations wanna make sure
Speaker:that they don't get into lawsuits related to accessibility,
Speaker:but there are also a lot of organizations
Speaker:that understand the ROI of it
Speaker:and also understand that it just kind of fits the company
Speaker:and product culture that they want to have.
Speaker:How does it kind of sort out with the projects
Speaker:that you've worked on?
Speaker:Is it then more the stick versus the carrot,
Speaker:or, you know, kind of,
Speaker:what's been the balance in your experience?
Speaker:- It's a good question.
Speaker:I mean, I'm biased course to begin with.
Speaker:So I'll always say that it's the stick side of things,
Speaker:is that we didn't wanna make something
Speaker:that wasn't going to be for everybody, right?
Speaker:And we get a lot of messages,
Speaker:and they're supposed to be nice messages
Speaker:and there is an aspect of them that is hugely nice to hear.
Speaker:You know, we receive messages from customers that say,
Speaker:I haven't been able to manage my energy before now,
Speaker:you know, I've had a friend or a loved one to do it
Speaker:because it's been terribly inaccessible.
Speaker:I now feel like I can have control over this.
Speaker:And I'm very proud.
Speaker:You know, I feel immensely proud
Speaker:to receive messages like that.
Speaker:And then I think to myself,
Speaker:should someone have to choose us for that reason, right?
Speaker:Like there are so many reasons
Speaker:that you might buy our product,
Speaker:so many reasons that you might prefer one to the other.
Speaker:But what we're talking about is like the basic ability
Speaker:to manage something that is essential
Speaker:on a day to day, right?
Speaker:To kind of keep your energy bills in check
Speaker:and to make sure that you're able to submit readings
Speaker:and all that stuff.
Speaker:Like I would wanna see an industry
Speaker:where everybody has to adhere to that standard,
Speaker:and then you choose a product based on the values
Speaker:that match yours.
Speaker:Is it renewable?
Speaker:Is it the cheapest that it could be?
Speaker:Do they have great customer service?
Speaker:These are all things that,
Speaker:you know, make a business a business,
Speaker:and I can completely understand that each one
Speaker:are better or worse at some of those things.
Speaker:Accessibility, despite you said the kind of the ROI thing,
Speaker:you know, that that is a very real thing.
Speaker:You know, it's a lot that can be contributed financially,
Speaker:but I hate the idea that it's something
Speaker:that you have to sell into people, right?
Speaker:That you have to say,
Speaker:hey, look at what this can kind of benefit
Speaker:from your business.
Speaker:I understand there is a semblance of reality to that,
Speaker:but in my head, everyone should be at a basic level
Speaker:where people are able to engage with your product,
Speaker:and then they choose whether their product is for you.
Speaker:The accessibility is not part of the product.
Speaker:It shouldn't be, it should just be there.
Speaker:And although, you know,
Speaker:we've been developing it for a while,
Speaker:we've been trying to talk to our competitors effectively
Speaker:in the market, the people around us,
Speaker:just to kind of share resources and share the book
Speaker:and kind of say, you know,
Speaker:how's about you have a look at this as well,
Speaker:and, you know, everybody will get an opportunity
Speaker:to choose between a range of products
Speaker:based on what they like about your product
Speaker:and not if they can actually get to your product.
Speaker:That for me is a real,
Speaker:it feels like a very double-edged sword.
Speaker:I love what we're doing,
Speaker:but there's always a drive to do,
Speaker:or to kind of get other people to do that as well,
Speaker:so that we are talking about a real level playing field,
Speaker:because I think that's what the internet can provide,
Speaker:is a place where people can actually engage
Speaker:in a number of different ways to get to the same content
Speaker:and get an enjoyable experience online
Speaker:and then choose what they want.
Speaker:That's the goal for me.
Speaker:So, yeah.
Speaker:- And so in the work that you're doing now,
Speaker:kind of, what's a day in the life or the week in the life
Speaker:related to a accessibility?
Speaker:What are some of the topics or tasks that come up
Speaker:that you get involved with?
Speaker:- It's a good question.
Speaker:Well, I mean, so,
Speaker:a big one is always still education, right?
Speaker:We were always growing as a company,
Speaker:and unfortunately, in the same way that I didn't kind of
Speaker:come here packaged with a lot of accessibility knowledge,
Speaker:we get a lot of people that still don't.
Speaker:And so there's always a worry
Speaker:of kind of creating an accessible website,
Speaker:leaving it to other developers
Speaker:and it accidentally slowly but surely becoming inaccessible
Speaker:if you're not checking it in the same way
Speaker:and making sure that it's upholding the same standards
Speaker:that you set initially.
Speaker:So sharing that information with as many people as I can
Speaker:across the business,
Speaker:helping people understand that making testing
Speaker:not just kind of functional
Speaker:or kind of coding end to end testing be thing,
Speaker:but actual accessibility testing.
Speaker:There are some fantastic tools that exist now
Speaker:for devs are non-devs.
Speaker:You know, you can do it from a Chrome browser,
Speaker:you know, basic things like the wave checking
Speaker:and lighthouse checking, which is great
Speaker:and a lovely thing for a designer
Speaker:to check their color contrast themselves,
Speaker:or a product manager to check, you know,
Speaker:what's something sounds like on a screen reader,
Speaker:that is lovely to see,
Speaker:and then some kind of continuous deployment checks
Speaker:so that they run on new pieces of code
Speaker:and make sure you haven't introduced anything
Speaker:that's inaccessible.
Speaker:That's a big thing for me,
Speaker:is kind of making sure as my team grows,
Speaker:that they will share that passion and have that knowledge
Speaker:so that they're not even inadvertently
Speaker:making the site less accessible than it was.
Speaker:So I think teaching is a big, big part of that.
Speaker:Talking to other parts of the business.
Speaker:So we have more and more clients working with us
Speaker:based on the things that we have done,
Speaker:you know, the products we've built
Speaker:and us extending to different parts of the world,
Speaker:which is great, but offers another kind of opportunity
Speaker:to chat to people initially.
Speaker:You know, that having the chance to work with Octopus Energy
Speaker:involves accessibility right from the start.
Speaker:So when people come to visit us,
Speaker:you know, we talk about the benefits of the system
Speaker:and the operating model and the technology and that's great,
Speaker:but oh, you know, also these things are accessible.
Speaker:You know, you can make sure, you know,
Speaker:we don't know about the current tools that you're using,
Speaker:but you know, respectfully, there's a good chance
Speaker:they might not be accessible.
Speaker:You're dealing with something right out of the box
Speaker:where not only can your customers engage with it
Speaker:if they have access needs or disabilities,
Speaker:but the people that work for you,
Speaker:if they have access needs or disabilities
Speaker:can work with the system, you know,
Speaker:can do something like that.
Speaker:So we're as focused on making sure
Speaker:that they can work with us as a company
Speaker:and do work from there, you know,
Speaker:to be a true equal opportunity employer
Speaker:to actually allow people to use our systems,
Speaker:not just make the content
Speaker:that we're putting online accessible, right?
Speaker:So I think it's a mixture of advocacy,
Speaker:a mixture of teaching,
Speaker:a mixture of kind of forever learning as well.
Speaker:You know, we've got this new kind of third version
Speaker:of WCAG that's coming out
Speaker:and understanding that looks like.
Speaker:I really like that there is a whole different aspect of that
Speaker:that focuses entirely on proper user testing,
Speaker:because of course, you know,
Speaker:these automated tests can get us to a certain point,
Speaker:but actually engaging with people
Speaker:and having them test your products,
Speaker:there's no substitute for it, as you well know anyway.
Speaker:So I love that there is something in there,
Speaker:where you can't just run a test
Speaker:and the test says you're accessible
Speaker:and therefore you're accessible, and that's great.
Speaker:You get a big tick there, everything's great.
Speaker:You sit down with someone and say,
Speaker:hey, you know, that might seem like it's totally accessible,
Speaker:but if you actually, if you listen to this,
Speaker:or if you actually go through in this way,
Speaker:there are some fundamental flaws with it.
Speaker:So I'm a big fan of that.
Speaker:So keeping an eye on what's moving forward,
Speaker:but teaching everybody what they might not know
Speaker:when they first join
Speaker:or when they first start to work with us,
Speaker:I'd say that is probably not a week,
Speaker:that's a multi-member job anyway,
Speaker:like an ongoing job that probably never ends,
Speaker:but that's where my huge focus is at the moment
Speaker:with accessibility.
Speaker:- I mentioned your book at the start of our conversation,
Speaker:Practical Web Inclusion and Accessibility.
Speaker:I have written a few books.
Speaker:I know that it's a large commitment
Speaker:to decide to get into something like that,
Speaker:but what was it for you?
Speaker:How did you decide you were going to sit down
Speaker:and put in the time to work through something like that?
Speaker:- Well, I mean, first of all,
Speaker:if you've done a number of books,
Speaker:you are a far braver man than I am.
Speaker:One was quite the task.
Speaker:So doing multiple is incredibly impressive.
Speaker:I think it naturally evolved for me.
Speaker:I started writing for a couple of magazines,
Speaker:just to kind of get some tutorials out there
Speaker:and say, hey, maybe you could check out this,
Speaker:you know, there's this technology that's come about.
Speaker:You should probably have a look to see
Speaker:whether your sites are inclusive.
Speaker:And that grew to features
Speaker:where I was kind of writing more about an opinion
Speaker:on the state of it at the time
Speaker:and how that perhaps there isn't as much emphasis
Speaker:as they should be.
Speaker:And then as we kind of mentioned a little bit before,
Speaker:starting to talk to people with different disciplines
Speaker:that maybe weren't into web development,
Speaker:but didn't really know about accessibility.
Speaker:And I gave a talk at a conference in the UK
Speaker:called the Festival of Marketing,
Speaker:which is notoriously not a dev conference, right?
Speaker:It's filled with product and project managers
Speaker:and, you know, various designers and things like that.
Speaker:And I got up and spoke for an hour
Speaker:about the fundamentals of accessibility,
Speaker:but had to do so in a way for a totally different audience,
Speaker:an audience I'd never spoken to before.
Speaker:It made me question how to approach this whole topic,
Speaker:but to do it in a way that was engaging.
Speaker:And so people would come afterwards and ask questions.
Speaker:They'd be like, okay, I kind of know where I can get into,
Speaker:and this is actually really fascinating.
Speaker:You know, this is an excellent challenge,
Speaker:because it is, it's a fascinating topic.
Speaker:There's so much to get into and so much to learn
Speaker:by getting involved with accessibility.
Speaker:So after doing that talk,
Speaker:I ended up speaking to a publisher,
Speaker:and they said, there isn't a book out here
Speaker:that's doing that at the moment.
Speaker:It ended up being twice as big as I'd hoped it would be,
Speaker:because most like the topic,
Speaker:it just kind of kept going and kept going,
Speaker:but they were totally okay with that.
Speaker:And so I did that around my job.
Speaker:Took about 10, 11 months to do.
Speaker:It was an incredibly grueling affair,
Speaker:to be honest with you,
Speaker:like to kind of put all that together.
Speaker:And I'm very thankful to Octopus, where I work,
Speaker:for supporting that really,
Speaker:in the essence of like understanding
Speaker:that my brain would be in two places
Speaker:for a little bit of time.
Speaker:And I'm incredibly proud that it exists.
Speaker:The title was a bit of a mouthful,
Speaker:but I understand why the publisher would want it
Speaker:to be a bit of a mouthful,
Speaker:because there's a lot about inclusivity
Speaker:and accessibility in there,
Speaker:but it now acts as this kind of conversation topic.
Speaker:As we kind of mentioned with all of the different companies,
Speaker:it is now something that a CEO of another company
Speaker:can pick up and start to read to understand the concept,
Speaker:a designer that comes to visit,
Speaker:you know, a person that comes to interview Greg
Speaker:will end up talking about accessibility.
Speaker:Conversations that just wouldn't happen before, you know.
Speaker:Just no one would get onto that topic
Speaker:perhaps initially or organically, but it's there
Speaker:and it starts to bring it into the fold every time.
Speaker:And so every time someone visits, they join
Speaker:and I'll happily talk about it for hours and hours,
Speaker:so that's no problem at all.
Speaker:So that is how it came about.
Speaker:That is why it exists now.
Speaker:And the response to it has been lovely.
Speaker:It's really nice to see people get into the topic
Speaker:for the first time through what you've written down.
Speaker:It is by no means a finished article,
Speaker:because it's always a constant thing, right?
Speaker:It's always evolving,
Speaker:but from that point in time,
Speaker:giving someone a starter and a basis, I'm very proud of it.
Speaker:I'm proud that it exists.
Speaker:- Yeah, well, congratulations on doing that
Speaker:and contributing to the knowledge share in this area.
Speaker:And yeah, I think about accessibility
Speaker:as an iterative activity myself.
Speaker:There are just so much out there,
Speaker:but if you get frozen,
Speaker:it's better to just pick some place to start.
Speaker:- Yeah, absolutely, couldn't agree more.
Speaker:- Everything we do is an improvement for somebody,
Speaker:which is one of the kind of enjoyable parts
Speaker:of this activity, I think. - Absolutely.
Speaker:- Well, thanks for taking this time
Speaker:to chat with me for this.
Speaker:And I'm sure everybody listening and watching this
Speaker:will appreciate it as well.
Speaker:And good luck in all of the rest
Speaker:of your accessibility efforts.
Speaker:- Oh, thank you so much.
Speaker:It's been a real pleasure.
